Timelord gives us this look inside of being an extra on Episode II. This is part 5, the others can be seen in our archives (1, 2, 3 and 4):

The next few hours here I feel truly privileged to have been privy to. We were able to walk around and chat whilst Hayden and Natalie were filming another scene. There were toilets here so I took the opportunity to use them, it is a logistical nightmare when some people were covered in layers of costume. On returning from the bathroom, who should be there on a trolley but R2 himself. Needless to say myself and numerous others went over there and touched, poked, prodded etc, everyone's favourite astromech droid. He is a great tribute to his makers as what you see on film is exactly how he appears.

After satisfactorily tormenting the little fella I turned around and looked upstairs to where some offices were. What I saw filled me with delight, stuck on one of the walls up there were some concept drawings of what looked like ships. Whilst I can't work out how to describe them to you I'll just say they looked organic, though that's not really the right word. They were good though. I couldn't actually get upstairs, so I moved further along the downstairs part.

I came across yet another hidey-hole of excitement. This little area had a number of models around on the tables and a large cardboard cutout of Boba Fett up the back, the same type you can buy of your favorite movie star, etc. The models appeared to be a landing platform of some sort with a ship situated on it. Now I'm not going to say the name of the ship, but everyone knows and will recognise it. Also there was a model of the street scene that I had done on the first day.

Being totally dumbstruck by this stage I continued to move on, just around the corner the sound people (?) were sitting at their monitors. I don't know too much about who does what, but I think they were sound folk. On the monitors though was a gorgeous close-up of Natalie Portman, her head and shoulders and also showing her headpiece, on the other was a wider shot of her sitting, with a few extras in the background. Her dress in this scene is every bit as spectacular as anything in TPM. The headpiece is similar to the one in TPM where she is sitting at the window with her two handmaidens behind her, except that it's gold in color. Myself, numerous extras and the sound guys were all watching this on the monitors, and I can assure you the new digital cameras are nothing short of astounding. The clarity and detail of these shots I saw was phenomenal. Even the sound guys were impressed as they chatted to each other in jargon I fail to comprehend other than to know it was very positive.

They would sit there and say look at it when we put it in greyscale (I think that was the term, or something similar), to which the other would reply can we print that, that's great. As this was happening Rick McCallum turned up and stood there with some people as well, chatting with them about the quality of the production and film. This was all being done as they were setting up for the shot, so we could here just general chatter between Natalie and whoever was fussing over her at the time, as well as between her and Hayden. Hayden wasn't on screen, but it was obvious that's who she was talking to in the scene. As the shot was set up Natalie prepared for her scene, the only problem was as soon as filming commenced the sound for the monitors was turned down. I can't lip read so I could only guess as to the scene. I think it will be an intimate scene between her and Anakin, as the camera is looking up towards her face from it's position, as I said in a close-up view of her face. The best part about watching this scene though is that they kept fluffing it.

They would get to a particularly tender (looking) moment and Natalie would suddenly laugh. Cut would be called and they would try again, but as they already had the giggles they would ultimately end up doing the same thing over and over. I probably saw them laugh about 7 times and think they finally got it right.

After lunch we were again called on to set. This time they filmed the same scene we had done in the morning from the other end, so my part was off camera unfortunately. However, it did give me the opportunity to watch R2 in action. The drivers are exceptional at being able to steer him through a plethora of obstacles. It's also strange to have the first A.D. set up the scene and then have George who was nowhere to be seen yell action (he was watching on the monitors) and again yell cut from out of nowhere at the end. Once this scene was completed they moved us all to the back of the set away from the next shot, very annoying. I watched the next scene between Anakin and Amidala which was another intimate moment. This scene George fussed over a lot, he would do a take and then come out from his cubby hole and whisper hints of advice to Hayden and Natalie, and then return again. They probably did about 8 takes of this scene, one had to be re-done because Hayden's nose started to run. But they were eventually happy when George yelled "Cut...perfect". At this point everyone had a break as the shot was reset.

I had my eyes glued on Natalie as I couldn't resist a meeting with her.I was told that Natalie is generally pleasant, though if she is a little stressed she can be a little stand-offish/stressy sort of thing. I took this into consideration, but she appeared quite happy at the time. She then began walking in my general direction and I was about to make a move when she called a man and a woman over to her. She then began introducing these people to the main people on set. I soon realised these two were her Mother and Father. She brought them over to meet someone near me and I found an inobtrusive moment to talk to her. I was elated and the envy of all men there that day. On Natalie, seeing her up close is amazing. Her skin and complexion is flawless, all she has is the freckle on the left-hand side of her face.

We then moved back down to the marquee by Stage 2. Often you would see Hayden riding around on a little electric scooter, the humorous thing about this was, attached to the front of it was a model STAP, so it looked like whoever was riding the scooter was riding a STAP. On this model where the STAP's engines are were two headlights for the scooter, it looked great. Down at Stage 2 Hayden appeared on the scooter. He wasn't doing anything in particular so I decided to go and have a chat. I asked him how he was and whether he was enjoying Australia. He thought it was great and he was having a great time. I apologised for the cold spell we were having, but he said it wasn't really like winter to him as he's from Toronto. I agreed were prety mild compared to Canada and told him how I liked Toronto as well. We exchanged a few more pleasantries before I left, you should know that Hayden is quite a pretty boy, though that's not his fault. One of those model type men with perfect skin, etc (life's not fair). He's quite tall and has a slim build and is quite a good actor from what I saw earlier in the day.

An all-round nice guy who I think will do well.